For people in modern Western societies, it is the essence of what we hold sacred - the individual - that we do not prejudge a person's current politics based on their inherited (political-)religious tradition. We believe in individual freedom and conscience (as the gift of divine love). We can't say that all Muslims want to make the whole world into a single Sharia state, even if that goal is outlined in Islamic holy books, unless we are deferring to an orthodox Islamic understanding of the sacred, or perhaps to a puritanical instinct of our own.
That's to say, there are some among us who insist that Islam, proper, is indeed about submission to an immutable core idea of Sharia and Jihad. If you're not doing and thinking what the Koran and the other Muslim holy texts, in the bulk of their more authoratative pronouncements clearly favour - i.e. making a sharp and often bitter distinction between the believer who submits to Islam, and the non-believer, infidel, or kafir - then you are simply not a Muslim and should call yourself something else. And yet, such a belief cannot escape the pragmatic fact that there are people who call themselves Muslims who believe they have some flexibility in shaping the boundaries of what is Islam and in choosing how to address the non-believer.
It will be interesting to see who wins this war of words, and what will be the terms of understanding in the "peace treaty" that emerges from present global conflicts. In the meantime, and with an eye to being on the side that gets to shape the terms of the future peace (as best suits our modern needs), do we best fight the conflict by seeking to polarize it, along the lines of orthodox or radical Islam, or do we best subvert orthodoxy by denying its take on reality? Some Westerners think belief in a "moderate Islam" is just a form of dangerous denial of (and opening doors to) the great threat we face, while others see the belief as necessary to sustaining a tactical and realistic flexibility that is to our advantage. Depending on context, there are strong arguments for both sides. But it is ultimately to imagining the terms of the future peace that we must give our deepest reflection, in trying to fit tactics to the strategic goals of our warfare.
In today's National Post, Barbara Kay returns to the field with another contender in the name game, "Islamolucidity", in her discussion of the Quebec website, Point de Bascule, that we mentioned earlier for its challenge to the Canadian Human Rights Commission:
If nothing else, the publicity generated by the human-rights-commission show trials of journalists Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn proves that a new word is needed to define good-faith critics of ideological Islam -- something other than the incorrect and chilling, but increasingly reflexive, "Islamophobic."
By coincidence I just discovered one on a Quebec-based Web site --www.pointdebasculecanada.ca -- a nicely inclusive word: " Islamolucide." A clear-headed Islamolucide can be a liberal Muslim, such as Canada's outspoken university professor and pundit Salim Mansur; an ex-Muslim, such as Ibn Warriq, author of Why I am Not a Muslim; or anyone else who accepts Muslims as citizens equal to all others, but who condemns bids for Islamic entitlements that conflict with western values.
Islamolucides defend and more importantly promote the separation of church and state, individual rights, respect for all religious (or non-religious) choices, and a common legal system as beneficial for everyone, including Muslims.
[...]
The Quebec Web site's name -- " Point de bascule" (PdB)--means "tipping point." PdB defends Western values -- particularly the right to freedom of speech -- and provides a rallying point for Islamolucidite as a francophone bookend to the anglophone Muslim Canadian Council.
On Monday, PdB's director, Marc Lebuis, filed a complaint of "hate propaganda" with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against Montreal Salafist Imam Hammaad Abu Sulaiman Al-Dameus Hayiti, who officiates at the Association Musulmane de Montreal Est mosque.
The complaint relates to the imam's book, downloadable in pdf format on the Internet, L'Islam ou L'Integrisme:A la Lumiere du Qor'an et de la Sounnah, as well as his Web-based extremist preachings. In both, the imam's supremacist, misogynistic and West-loathing epithets often target Quebecois, whom he characterizes as " khoufars" (infidels, impious), "stupid and ignorant" and --Quebec's women-- "perverse."
As a classic liberal, Lebuis believes this repugnant segregationist (who has also urged the destruction of such "idols" as secularism, democracy, human rights, freedom and modernity) should be perfectly free to spew his phobic bile. Short of the usual strictures against direct incitement to violence, Lebuis deplores any opinion censorship.
But Lebuis has become alarmed by the Orwellian thought-control creep we've seen lately in the name of human rights. His complaint, he explained in an interview, plays the minority politics game as a means to "test the CHRC's standard in tracking hate and propaganda."
Lebuis adds, with candid scorn for the near-complete journalistic silence on the especially virulent strain of Salafist Islamism in Quebec: "I would not be doing this if the [francophone] mainstream media were doing their job."
[...]
The Algerian-Canadian Islamolucides who frequent PdB are especially bitter about the francophone media's willed blindness to the jihadism in their midst. In Algeria, these Islamolucides were the victims of the very Islamism that parades so freely here, not only without media censure, but with the complicity of useful idiots like Barbara Hall and other Islam-besotted enablers.
A frequent PdB site visitor called "Jugurten" writes (my translation): "The Algerian Muslim Islamolucides that I know and who have succeeded in surviving [the Algerian conflicts] are full of resentment Many [of us who survived Algeria's civil war in the 1990s] travelled [to Canada] in the same airplane as those who threatened them with death, who burned their children and raped their wives."
Via a diversity of media, anglophone Canadians have access to a slew of Islamist specialists: To name but a familiar few: the Post's international terrorism expert Stewart Bell, radical-Islam observer Daniel Pipes, and the Middle East Media Research Institute.
No such dedicated Islamist critics grace the francophone media. In particular, while hostile francophone Islamists such as Imam Al-Hayiti exploit the Internet to the hilt, there is a dearth of francophone Web-based sites that expose Islamist agitprop. So PdB fills a significant gap in francophone Canadians' knowledge of the multiple threats Islamism poses to Quebec.
PdB attracts 50,000 hits a month (and rising), a mere bagatelle by the standards of popular English-language Websites, but a tsunami by francophone standards. Half PdB's visitors are Quebecois, half European and North African. Relevant borrowings of their material by Le Monde's blog confers additional credibility.
10 comments:
That various new interpretations are posited gives no proof that long held traditions and foundational precepts will be re-fixed. Certain theories in contradiction to the model of Jesus, as conveyed by Christianity’s central texts, were posited by the now widely discredited Hitler. Was he both then right, by consensus when elected to power, and now wrong, by contemporary consensus? Or did the fundamentals of Christianity, as held to by a “tiny minority of extremists” such as the Confessing Church remain fixed? Even if foundational precepts and most long established tradition could be subverted, what would be the point? Reversion would always be at least as easy as progressive subversion, if not more so.
The separation of Church and State is an oft misunderstood Western concept. Foreshadowed by Jesus’s, both “rendering unto Ceasar…” comment and his having never lobbied the Roman Senate –what model do current Christian politicians claim to follow?- the separation was borne out of a regressive trend initiated by widespread availability of Christian texts in common language. The Church was first separated from its powers to interpret for the masses. The State was then separated from their power to regulate the Church (as defined by conformance to text). If there is no prevaricating episcopy, then symbols do become fixed by common honesty.
Well there has to be a reality test for every religious innovation. HIstory is a competitive process between faiths and societies. Those who really can't change will die. And even if a society were totally isolated, or the only one on earth, it would have to survive its own tendencies to self-destruction and fission by evolving itself.
Sure, one can put forth a new religious interpretation and in the heat of the moment drag others along with it, for a time. But if the symbolic stuff, in conversation with existing realities, isn't there for the people to continually re-articulate their shared culture in ways that are useful, i.e. allowing them to mediate and defer conflict, if the re-interpretation doesn't return them to the origin of their faith in new understandings that are productive, then the novelty won't hold, and it will fail the test of history or reality.
Yet for all the failures of our many fantasies, cultural history is clearly a process of evolution. Some innovations do work, although at their beginning they could not have been foreseen to be sure to work. What's more, when innovations were first emerging, there could not even have been the full consciousness that what was happening was a definite attempt at innovation. The full consciousness of the attempt comes in second and third steps towards institutionalizing the innovation. THe first step is simply a tracing of the present "order" that is in crisis. It is a tracing that dwells on something in a useful way, something that simply isn't yet neatly covered by the existing ritual and law. By dwelling on this novelty, it opens it up to new possibilities and hopes that it can be shared and divided to allow for greater freedom in the culture as a whole, and hence to defer the present crisis; this is the test of a successful innovation, suggest the students of Generative Anthropology.
While most dreams come to naught, innovations (1%inspiration, 99%perspiration) that began as acts of uncertain faith, driven by necessity, have taken hold and worked. No great innovation is entirely or largely predictable.
In calling for Islamic reform, we are calling for an openness to sharing in new things that are going on in the world, with no guarantee that Islam can evolve and not discover that it is a dead end. Maybe it can't evolve. Maybe there will be no way for all parties to take a share in new things and no way to hold together without that happening. And no way for whatever groups that survive the failure to remain meaningfully Islamic. We'll know when we know.
Wouldn't it be best to encourage any process leading to such knowledge? WEll, the end could be violent, but if the end is coming, let's make it as apparent and predictable as possible. That will probably make it safer to handle. Instead of predicting the impossibility of change and letting current tensions build and build, why not encourage processes that will make it more likely, if Islam can't change, that it can at least fizzle out. THat would presumably entail encouraging that are disenchanting for Muslims.
It seems to me that embracing the cause of Islamic reform (while protecting non-Islamic interests) will either allow people to realize useful changes by expanding freedom in the Islamic systems, or allow the old sacred order to crumble more slowly by revealing its limits more clearly, a process of disenchantment (and isolation of the die hard extremists) that will serve as a pressure valve on the more dangerous fantasy ideologies.
And if Islam can evovle in ways that increase freedoms and defer conflicts, then we have to accept that.
Various religions are simply spiritual and social models with different origins and tenets. They argue whose model is more morally perfect. The pitfalls of fundamentalist extremism apply to all.
Religious leaders should instead encourage finding common ground.
We will all eventually come together in the truth. It will require a leap of faith from the religious and a recognition of the conscience from others.
The question is, during our short lives, will we support or oppose the coming together.
The issue is not that membership of any religion is decreasing but what it is replacing it as the shared spirituality of society.
Most of the youth, have no worldly experience or wisdom. With todays communication media they have a louder voice but nothing more to offer.
When we hear them extoll their immature life philosophies we can no longer be silent. Their errors are influencing others.
I heard a young radio talk show host this morning boldly claim, "my personal philosophy in life is to always expect the worst, then I feel so much better when it doesn't happen".
So we can assume when he is a parent he will expect the worst from his children and teach them to set their goals really low.
But this immature fool just doesn't have any wisdom or experience yet to know any better yet he goes unchallenged broadcasting to millions.
This immature influence concerns me more, than where or whether you attended group spiritual activities.
Wouldn't it be best to encourage any process leading to such knowledge?
I have not forbid innovative efforts, I am a proponent of the innovation that submitters should quit submitting, but then they'd no longer be submitters. Also, I have strongly cautioned that supposed "reform" efforts will most likely result in an unintended reformation.
re- prefix meaning "back to the original place, again,"
form c.1225, from O.Fr. forme, from L. forma "form, mold, shape, case," origin unknown.
...allow the old sacred order to crumble more slowly by revealing its limits more clearly...
The above is tactically possible, but strategically questionable, and fundamentally dishonest. Our pretense to islam's flexibility, does both allow full implementation of hudna and enter us into collusion with the "extremists" who do also tell the wage earners and mouth pieces that there are other forms of jihad.
The question is, during our short lives, will we support or oppose the coming together.
Actually, I've different questions. What do you suppose to do with the dissenters? Should I patiently wait for your towers of hubris to again fall, before telling you that you've no sense of your foundations?
Where the founders of the US incorrect to separate powers? To expect, corruption of politicians. To prepare for that eventuality.
Perhaps the parent that you denigrate does have a first aid kit, expecting that his little darling will not always have perfect balance? Perhaps, he cheers when a backflip is delftly effected? I beleive that is what his "immature life philosphy" -that just happens to harken back to the foundations of Constitutional Republicanism- does most clearly suggest.
"Should I patiently wait for your towers of hubris to again fall, before telling you that you've no sense of your foundations? "
What alternative do you suggest? In other words, what good are you?
Being prepared to modify plans after a failure is good sense.
Expecting failure is a pointless and self-fufilling prophecy.
Separating church from the state was meant to protect the tenets of the church from the corruption of politics. There was never any intent to select only godless leaders.
What alternative do you suggest? In other words, what good are you?
I propose to tell you now, perhaps you noticed that I have already done so?
Still, I don't understand what you intend to do with those dissenters that are content enough to argue whether a jar of piss is half full or half empty, but do object to said jar being sold as apple juice.
Various religions are simply spiritual and social models with different origins and tenets. They argue whose model is more morally perfect. The pitfalls of fundamentalist extremism apply to all.
Religious leaders should instead encourage finding common ground.
We will all eventually come together in the truth. It will require a leap of faith from the religious and a recognition of the conscience from others.
"simply with diffferent origins and tenets"... "we will all eventually come together in the truth"
-Rob, you aren't a Muslim by any chance, are you?
I mean, to write off the fact that most people's faith is grounded in specific historical revelations, in order to claim (it seems) that this historicity is somehow unimportant to the eternal or final truth we are soon all to reach, is a big and dubious intellectual claim.
I think it unlikely people will ever give up particular faiths rooted in particular historical revelations/traditions. It's not that there isn't a truth that unites us all, the truth inherent in our common origin as human beings. But this common truth, while powerful, is very small or minimal (compared to all the different ways this original truth has been articulated in history). It's too small a truth to be the stuff of an effective or involved faith tradition. Having faith in our common humanity is great, but it doesn't really provide you with a guide to how to live that humanity. But, if you have a figure like Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha, to follow, an event like the crucifixion or the revelation on Sinai, then you have the kind of historical substance/revelation that people of faith generally need.
I think we can come together in a common conversation about our shared human origins. But this will have the effect of deepening our understanding of our historically-rooted traditions of revelation, not of ending our reliance on historical specificities as a fundamental guide to our human self-understanding.
The above is tactically possible, but strategically questionable, and fundamentally dishonest. Our pretense to islam's flexibility, does both allow full implementation of hudna and enter us into collusion with the "extremists" who do also tell the wage earners and mouth pieces that there are other forms of jihad.
It would be fundamentally dishonest if I thought I really knew what would come of my call for tactical flexibility. You don't seem to believe me when I say that I don't know how or if Islam will be reformed. Because I say admit that it may be (for all I know) that Islam can't change much, you assume I am trying to be shifty in saying Islam should attempt reform. You have come to some sense of certainty on this issue and then claim my denial of same is dishonest. But I really don't share your sense of certainty.
I am willing to take risks with Islam, with attempting a "teaching moment" by engaging Muslims in ideas about adapting to modernity, as an alternative to having the final conflict out here and now. I am not willing to play bin laden's/Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic game. If I thought a successful end game could be effected here and now with little pain for all involved, I'd advocate it. I just can't see that happening. I don't exaggerate to say I think billions of lives are in play in the current global conflict.
Yes. I've noticed that you do not share the same sense of "certainty," prefering to argue that nearing 1400 years of tradition that follow a decidedly violent genesis, doesn't determinine that tradition. And, I understand that you argue with good faith in the ever changing winds of consensus. Specifically, I think you are being very forthright with me about conspiring with the munafiq to fix their heresy as the new thing that... still isn't fixed.
But, fundamentally dishonest it is, regardless if you are a conspirator or not, to pretend that islam is in any way more flexible than it already is by tradition. Islam does already afford the true beleiver to conceal their faith, to pratice hudna, and to "struggle" non-violently for the implimentation of sharia. None of those flexibilities alter the fundamental course of the edicts of a muderous pedophile.
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